Saturday, May 9, 2015

Surrealism Strikes!

MRC Watch Dept. - A Thursday article from Politico notes, "Fox pundits can't decide whether to cheer or jeer Pamela Geller," the organizer of the Muhammad art contest in Texas that, Sunday, was attacked by two Islamist rightists. Throughout the week, there's been a fair amount of criticism in conservative circles of both that contest and of Geller, who co-founded the American Freedom Defense Initiative, an anti-Muslim hate group. Though the writers at the Media Research Center have written rather extensively on the coverage of the shooting and of Geller and her group, they have, as this blog hasnoted, suppressed this criticism from the right in order to portray elements of the press as liberal for offering the same sort of criticism.[1]

Today, Newsbusters, in response to that Politico piece, finally ran an article that acknowledged the existence of the conservative criticism but coming after a week of these shenanigans, the attempted spin by Melissa Mullins is surreal:

"Apparently, the people at Politico are shocked that Fox News is living up to its 'Fair and Balanced' slogan, claiming that the network personalities '…have seemingly been at odds all week over Pamela Geller.' Oh my. Two different views – that’s almost unheard of!"

Moments that invoke the word "Orwellian" are, alas, significantly less than "unheard of" when dealing with the MRC.

--j.

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[1] Thursday, for example, Clay Waters attacked an editorial in the New York Times which had argued that events like the Muhammad art contest "can serve only to exacerbate tensions and to give extremists more fuel,” but like the rest of the MRC writers, Waters declined to relay to his readers that Fox's top-rated host Bill O’Reilly had offered the same sentiment. So had ultra-right-wing radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham, Donald Trump, the Catholic League's Bill Donohue (whose articles are sometimes published by the MRC), and so on -- most of this happening on Fox through the week.

[This article was written for MRC Watch, a blog dedicated to a critique of the surreal work of the Media Research Center.]